If you haven’t heard the news yet, Freelancer.com recently paid $3.2 million AUD (that’s roughly $3 million … and a steal of a deal considering that my estimations are that he shouldn’t be making less than $1 million a year right now, and Allen way under-utilizes the forum) to acquire the Warrior Forum from long time owner Allen Says. You can read the official post from Allen here.

There’s been a ton of speculation about what Freelancer might do with the Warrior Forum, but a lot of the speculation seems to be downright silly or stupid from a business standpoint, such as just redirecting traffic to Freelancer and so forth (no one in their right mind would do that to such a big and popular forum already making good money).

So I put together a list of what I would do if I were Freelancer, and what I really think they’re going to try to do in two different phases. Time will tell if I’m right, but I bet I am. :)

What Freelancer.com will do to the Warrior Forum — Phase 1

We already know that they lowered the initial WSO (Warrior Special Offer) pricing — the main marketplace at the Warrior Forum — from $40 to $20 to list your special offers for sale in their market (still costing $20 to “bump” it up again after a few days usually when it drops below page 3 in their forum marketplace), and we also know that they changed the War Room (a special sub-forum section where people share tips and give freebies) pricing from $20 one time to $20 / year.

However, in phase 1 I think their next step would be to introduce their own WSO network option where instead of users tracking their affiliate sales on the WSO forum through other WSO networks like JV Zoo and Warrior+ (or larger non WSO networks like Clickbank, Paydotcom, etc.) where most of those networks collect a fee per sale, they’ll have an option where you can use an option straight through the Warrior Forum itself.

Why does this make sense?

Simple, because it will mean more money in their pockets, and they can stand out by having more control over reviews, ratings, refunds, etc. than the other networks, which would give a major incentive to new users to use them.

Can they eliminate the competitors like JV Zoo, Warrior+, etc.?

Not initially — it’d be dumb of them to try to force WSO listings to go through them vs. just offering a big incentive to do so. They could piss off a large part of the community really quickly and risk the other networks trying to team up to drive the traffic outside of the forums altogether (something the other networks would be unlikely to do on a mass scale, but certainly could on a smaller scale with a handful of the vendors there).

So offering them as an alternative seems less intrusive and slowly builds their network. This will appease a lot of the members and prevent any major lash back, but that’s where phase 2 comes into play…

Phase 2 — The Takeover of the WSO Marketplace

Phase 1 will start right off the bat with some changes happening within the first few weeks, while the other parts might take a couple / few months to start up. After they start, phase 2 will happen anywhere from 6 months to one year later.

During phase 2 of this, Freelancer will already have their own competing marketplace in the WSO forum marketplace with a healthy portion of the WSO listings using them. Those listings will have extra benefits of easier ratings, more trustworthy reviews, more seamless integrations, etc..

And this is where the phase 2 plan really starts…

At that point in time, it’d be dumb of them to allow JV Zoo, Warrior+, and the others to really partake in their playground. It’d come off as less of a disruption if they kicked them out now vs. at the start, but they’ll have to go about it in the right way.

The best way to go about that would be to try to justify it for the better of the community, such as by saying that because of the reviews being abused by non-buyers or by the vendors themselves, they’re going to require that listings go through their own network so all of this can be verified for a better user experience (or something to that nature).

This will effectively be shutting down the other networks and giving nearly 100% control to their in-house network, which could mean massive profits for them.

But what will happen to JV Zoo, Warrior+, etc.???

For a short time, JV Zoo and Warrior+, who rely on the forum (despite what they may or may not admit) for their business, will try to act like that’s not a big deal and will act like they won’t need the forum, and they’ll do okay for awhile as they’ll have their band of loyal vendors that stick to them for awhile, but their lifeline will have been cut and without massive changes, they’ll likely die a slow and painful death.

The other networks that don’t rely on the forum will continue to obviously be just fine, though, and may even have a slight increase in activity during this time if everyone plays their cards right.

Could I be wrong???

Sure, I could be wrong (although I don’t think so), and there are a few possible moves that could change the above potential events slightly… For instance, Freelancer.com could make a lowball offer to buy one of the other forum networks.

I think it’d be kind of dumb of them to do that unless it’s a dirt cheap price (which the owners will be likely to turn down and will try to fight it out), but they’d have the benefit of starting with a base of users. However, unless it’s a dirt cheap price, they could easily get there themselves with controlling the entire forum to start with and being able to really push people into their new network if they create one (which almost certainly I believe they will).

Is it wrong of Freelancer to do this?

In short, no! If you drop $3.2 million, you have a right to try to get your investment back.

I’m sure many of you have heard of Fiverr. But if you haven’t, it’s basically where you can buy or sell literally almost anything for $5.

I feel like sometimes people are almost whoring themselves out for $5, but it just adds to the amusement of what people are willing to do for a few bucks…

But here’s the thing…

There’s a lot more to be made over at Fiverr if you do things right. Here’s how you can pile up some good paying customers and build a buyers list pretty quickly:

1. Offer some kind of a normally free or cheap service for $5 as a trial or as a starting point to a larger sale. For instance, maybe you offer to analyze their website and offer SEO suggestions for $5, but you then try to market an SEO service to them for something like $97 / month or so (or whatever). Or another example would be that you offer to help them pick out some kind of high price point product online (maybe they need help buying a tv, computer, jewelry, furniture, etc.) and for $5 you’ll help find them the best deal …. and then use your affiliate link when you give them the suggestion (ensuring that you get that cut off your suggestion).

2. Sell some “secret” or “tip” for $5 that is part of a larger package of yours. For instance, maybe you have a guide on how to improve your golf game — you can offer personal tips on how to improve their putting for $5 and hope that some buy your larger package.

3. Similar to #2, you can sell similar tips in the form of a newsletter or even just charge $5 to get them to sign up for your newsletter with all sorts of goodies. This builds a list of buyers and lines them up to buy more in the future.

4. Search for the “wanted” section there to see what people want, and then find a targeted customer base there and give them what they want using one of the other steps outlined here.

5. Contact any of the sellers of hot items / services and try to see if they’re willing to do a deal where you can sell their services for more to others …. and then market their services on forums, your mailing list, websites, classified areas, etc. for a huge market (or even hire some of those $5 offers to get them to market you — haha).

So that’s how you can turn $5 to a lot more and start making some easy money online over at Fiverr.

Wow, now that’s one long ass title, but quite fitting nonetheless. I always see people talking about what the best keyword tool is, and you’ll always get the typical responses: the sheep who just spout out what they already heard elsewhere without using anything themselves; the affiliates of one product vs. another product trying to either make a quick buck or justify their promos for the tool; and the drowned out voices of those who are giving an honest opinion.

Since Keyword Elite and Micro Niche Finder turned down my offer of saying their tools are the best keyword tools in exchange for a measly $2,000,000, I’m going to take the route of giving you my honest opinion.

Now, having said that, I already see some people assuming that I’m against Keyword Elite 2 and Micro Niche Finder — that’s completely not the case. Both are pretty cool tools, but I’m going to focus on the free keyword tools for now as many draw from the same sources …. it’s just in how they display the results and what features they have that make all the difference.

Having said that, Market Samurai essentially pulls its results from Google’s keyword generator anyway, and Google won’t try to sell you other stuff.

Google’s keyword tool is pretty nifty, and if you enter in a few relevant keywords, especially more long tail keywords, you can get some very relevant results that will show you how many searches they get a month, how competitive it is to advertise there, etc..

I love this tool and use it all the time, especially because it’s web-based and very easy to access.

The only major downside to it is that they don’t really allow you to sort the results easily. It’s still easy to see mostly what keywords are good and what ones are bad, but it’d be nice to offer more filtering features.

That’s where Market Samurai comes into play. The interface I don’t like nearly as much as Google’s own keyword tool, but they do a nice job of allowing you to sort through the results, rank the results by order of traffic or competition level, etc..

Since the keyword tool on Market Samurai is free anyway, I say use it if you’re going through HUGE keyword lists. They have some nifty filtering features that make it worthwhile.

However, since it’s desktop based, if you’re looking for a quick search and aren’t wanting to sift through hundreds of results, Google’s own keyword tool is just fine and easier.

Now, having said that, here’s my personal tip for finding awesome keywords: focus on keywords that get AT LEAST 1,000 searches per month and have at least a little Adwords competition (meaning that at least someone finds value in that keyword). Then see if domain names that are .com, .net, or .org are available with the keyword phrase in them (like [keyword phrase].com). If they are available, grab one (ideally .com, then .net, and then .org in order of preference).

Then make the keyword phrase your page title (what appears at the very top of the browser on any webpage), and you should have a decent chance of getting ranked well doing just that. Your chances will go up even more if most of the search results in Google don’t have the keyword phrase in their page title — to find out, do a search with the phrase in quotes on Google and check out how many sites have the keyword phrase within the page title (the blue link). If not many do, you have an awesome keyword to go after.

Comments / opinions — please leave them below.

My next two reviews will deal with traffic and leads, and both of those will have some awesome tips to get rich online … or at least make a little extra dough….

For those of you out of the know, forced continuity is where you sign up for something (usually a free newsletter or a free plus shipping product) and then automatically get billed on a monthly basis after that with no upfront option of opting out (you have to call in after the fact).

Well, for those of you in the super know, you’ve probably heard that a lot of major internet marketers had their merchant accounts shut down in the past couple weeks because Visa and Mastercard were trying to lay down the hammer on deceptive forced continuity ….. where the customers didn’t really know they were signing up for such a thing.

So you can probably understand (and if you can’t, f*ck you!) how pissed I was to recently have Best Buy (the offline store — not their website) outright lie to me and tricked me into a forced continuity …. followed by making it almost impossible to cancel.

Here’s the story:

I go to a local Best Buy store here to buy a new laptop.

I was told by a salesman that for $100 more, I can get one pre-setup with 6 months free of an anti-virus software.

Not wanting to deal with the hassle of setting up the laptop, I pay the extra $100.

The salesman tells me that for the 6 months free for the anti-virus, he needs to scan it in and I need to swipe my card — he reassures me that I WILL NOT BE CHARGED for the anti-virus. I asked if there were any charges whatsoever for it, and he says “no, the only reason you swipe your card is so we can acknowledge that you got the free software — I’ll immediately deduct the cost so it’s free, and then in 6 months, you’ll get an e-mail asking you if you want to pay for anything past that,” and I again ask “so it won’t ever charge the card?” and he says “no, it’s free — this is just to verify that you got it.”

Okay, cool, whatever…

But then, after I do that, I realize that the credit card monitor says that I’m agreeing to AUTO-REBILLING of my credit card. I immediately bring this up and said that I don’t want to be rebilled, and he says “oh … [with some dumbass look on his face] you can cancel anytime you want.” and I say “okay, great, cancel me now.” and he says “we can’t do it here — you need to call 1-888-Best Buy — you can do that first thing tomorrow.”

I then ask if that number is written down on the receipt or anything, and he says no. So now I’m thinking, how the f*ck would I know how to cancel if I didn’t ask that right then and there on the spot???? And more so, how the f*ck would the majority of the people even know that they agreed to the auto-rebill when this dude was bluntly saying over and over again that there were NO CHARGES and the only reason for the credit card swipe was to verify that we got it. That’s an outright LIE!

But wait, it gets better!!!

So first thing right afterwards, I call up the 1-888-Best Buy number, explain the situation, and ask to be taken off the auto-rebill. And guess what they say??? They said “sorry, you can only cancel at this number AFTER 30 days — you can call up your local Best Buy to try to have them cancel it there sooner.”

I’m seriously like ?!?!?!?!?!?!?!! ….. that Best Buy told me that the ONLY way I can cancel is to call up the 1-888 number, and that I can do it the very next day immediately (another lie). Then that number says “nope, you can only cancel after 30 days.”

That basically means that they’re A) making it ridiculously deceptive that they’re even auto-billing you at all, B) they’re making it impossible to know how to cancel (if I hadn’t asked, I would have no information and no clue how to do so), and C) they’re purposely making rules that are aimed at making it difficult to nearly impossible to cancel.

On top of outright lying, they’re basically saying “call this number and hope that they’ll cancel you …. although they’ll probably tell you to go back to us and we’ll have you go in a never ending circle ….. unless you cancel after 30 days but before 6 months excluding Jewish holidays and Kwanza …. but you can’t cancel between the hours of 5 am and 1 am, unless your name is Bubba, in which case you can at 2:01 pm but not 2:02 pm, excluding every day except Sundays …. only if your first born son was born on that Sunday, and if not, f*ck you.”

This is ridiculous, and it’s making me PMSing over how they allowed this to happen. This is worse than ANY internet forced continuity I’ve ever seen. We’ll keep you updated…. Hopefully they’ll be smart about it and just make it easy for me to cancel. Otherwise, they’ll have sh*t to pay for. :)

So if you’ve been reading anything on my blog for the last couple weeks, you know that I started giving out different online money making ideas. I plan to continue that indefinitely with at least one new method a week or so …. unless I get lazy …. then it might take longer than one a week …. but hopefully I won’t get lazy. :)

I have a BOATLOAD of methods that I’ve tried, and I have a smaller boatload of methods that actually worked for me (still in the dozens). However, rather than have all of the ideas come from me, I thought it’d be fun to get all of my readers involved in it ….. and non-readers too — I’ll spread the love …. as long as there’s no crabs or anything like that coming with it…..

So here’s the deal:

Submit any / all of your money making ideas to me at cantgetrich [at] gmail.com.

By doing so, you’ll be giving me permission to use and talk about that money making method.

If I post the method and it’s actually good, I’ll Paypal you $10 and post a link to you for credit (if you want a link / credit). If it’s not that good of a method … well … I probably won’t be posting it anyway so that doesn’t matter.

(But wait, there’s more! ….. including more money in it for you!)

Please have the methods be at least somewhat unique and not standard stuff — if you say “write a review of a Clickbank product with your affiliate link” and don’t provide any other tips or information or specifics on that, don’t be expecting me to post that (although you certainly could provide more details or tips on how to do a CB review and get it posted).

And to top it off…

The best one that I receive the first week will get a $100 Paypal prize.

So there you have it — not only will I enter you into a contest for a $100 Paypal price, but I’ll also PAY YOU if you have a good enough money making method that makes this blog AND you’ll get a link to your site. I’m pretty f-ing awesome, aren’t I?

Two Random Announcements …… well, one is more like a rant:

First, the rant…. I know this is off topic, but it’s my blog so I get to be off topic when I want (dammit!). I don’t know about you, but I’m getting sick and tired of reviews of products that are either worthlessly just trying to get an affiliate commission or just whining or bashing the product (that’s right folks, it goes both ways) … often times never even using the product or giving it a fair chance.

This past week, I’ve seen worthless products getting praised up the wazzoo, as well as awesome products get bashed.

Pretty soon I’m going to start writing product reviews and summaries WITHOUT an affiliate link and WITH awesome advice on how to use them (or at least how I use the products) with the good, the bad, and the f-ing ugly.

Announcement #2: This blog will be undergoing some minor maintenance sometime in the next day or two, so it might temporarily be down for several hours. If that happens, don’t panic, take a paxil, and chill until I get back.